![\"OpenLetterQld\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/OpenLetterQld.jpg?resize=800%2C400\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Money makes the world go round.\u00a0 That\u2019s a truism in a market economy.\u00a0\u00a0 The promise of democracy \u2013 one vote, one person, one value \u2013 ought to balance that.\u00a0\u00a0 But what if money makes the political world go round?<\/p>\n
Nothing less than the fate of electoral democracy is at stake if we let money swamp politics.\u00a0\u00a0 Swamps have formed again in Qld and NSW, as they do periodically elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Last week \u201850 prominent Australians\u2019 published an open letter<\/a> beseeching Queensland\u2019s parties to agree to 4 governance and accountability principles.\u00a0 It was motivated by concerns that Queensland\u2019s Crime and Misconduct Commission, judicial independence and political finance laws have been weakened recently.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t an academic left-fest.\u00a0 The signatories were from a broad spectrum.\u00a0 Centrist and conservative media figures (an ex Courier-Mail chief editor, an Alan Jones), retired senior law officers (an attorney-general, a judge, an integrity commissioner, a CMC commissioner), Father Frank Brennan and former Nationals Minister Beryce Nelson.<\/p>\n All political parties responded favourably.\u00a0 Except the LNP.<\/p>\n I signed, not because I\u2019m \u2018prominent\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m just one citizen worried that Queensland has gone backwards on political finance and donation disclosure.\u00a0 (Albeit a citizen who has spent 15 years studying this). \u00a0In one term, we have gone from a lax system, to a regulated one, to a lax one again<\/a>.<\/p>\n Political finance needs holistic regulation<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Caps on big donations.\u00a0\u00a0 Caps on campaign expenditure.\u00a0 Meaningful donation disclosure.\u00a0 Rules against the sale of access to frontbenchers.\u00a0 Fairer public funding.<\/p>\n Soul Pattinson, a coal and pharmaceutical conglomerate, has $700 000 reasons to seek to influence politics.\u00a0 That\u2019s what it has gifted the Liberal Party<\/a>, in government at state and national level, in the past 3 years.\u00a0\u00a0 A few big unions, too, dominate Labor\u2019s finances in opposition.<\/p>\n Everyday citizens blanche at such contributions.\u00a0 The perception of corruption, of money buying access and influence, if not quid pro quo favours, is inevitable.\u00a0 It\u2019s even unfair on other businesses and groups. They have to share the flak their industry attracts, and join the donation delivery cart or feel left out of the lobbying game.<\/p>\n South Australia and NSW are implementing real time<\/em> disclosure of all four figure donations.\u00a0 New York pioneered this decades ago<\/a>.\u00a0 In an internet age, every system should.\u00a0 Without it, we can\u2019t begin to judge the veracity of claims<\/a> and counter-claims<\/a> about tainted donations.<\/p>\n Yet in Queensland \u2013 as at national level \u2013 we won\u2019t know who donated what to which parties until February next year<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0Donations under about $12 500 won\u2019t be revealed.\u00a0 A business owner can anonymously donate that amount four times<\/em> annually:\u00a0 to local and national party branch, and via her private and company account).<\/p>\n There\u2019s other ruses.\u00a0 The LNP argues its sale of tables<\/a>, at events to speak to and hear from Ministers, is a commercial transaction, not money \u2018donated\u2019 to it.\u00a0 If that legal double-speak were true, then the parties are admitting to trading in a public benefit (ministers\u2019 time and governmental information), and not merely \u2018prostituting\u2019<\/a> themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 To rub salt, taxpayers would also be subsidising it as a business expense!<\/p>\n Reintroducing expenditure limits is a must.\u00a0 Only they can dampen the parties\u2019 hunger for big donations and create fairer electoral campaigns.\u00a0 The LNP was afraid the Palmer Party, not Labor, might match its war-chest.\u00a0 Its snap election caught the newer parties on the hop. It needn\u2019t have worried. The LNP will rake in an unprecedented amount<\/a> \u2013 well over $40m \u2013 in this term of government.<\/p>\n Power tends to corrupt.\u00a0 Or rather, the powerful want to perpetuate that power.\u00a0 In politics, nepotism, massaging the flow of information, and milking incumbency are the tools of that trade.\u00a0\u00a0 Playing games with political finance is a key incumbency benefit.\u00a0\u00a0 Government advertising<\/a>, soft-soaping the electorate before the campaign starts, is another.\u00a0 The problems need to be tackled holistically.<\/p>\n No party has a monopoly on abusing public trust or milking political money.\u00a0 In NSW, Labor reined for 16 years.\u00a0 The Liberal-Nationals were starved of donations<\/a>. (That money follows power is the surest sign of what the monied want<\/a>).\u00a0 And Labor was corrupted badly.<\/p>\n Sometimes the major parties form a cartel.\u00a0 In Queensland last year they legislated themselves 2 lines of public funding, post-election and annual.\u00a0 Beyond greedy, they structured public funding<\/a> making it harder or even impossible for minor parties and independents to access.<\/p>\n The media needs to avoid false moral equivalence, however.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes one party, especially one facing defeat or in opposition, does act in a more principled way. Labor, under Bligh, foreswore selling access to frontbenchers.\u00a0\u00a0 Labor, The Greens and others in Queensland still voluntarily disclose $1000 donations, biannualy.\u00a0\u00a0 But now Labor has backslid on selling access<\/a>.<\/p>\n As in cricket, one side can\u2019t vow not to bowl dangerous bouncers whilst the other side continues too for long.\u00a0 It\u2019s neither stable nor fair.\u00a0 Regulation is needed, not moral posturing.<\/p>\n Occasionally, the parties come together to design a better system.\u00a0 Labor, Liberal and Greens recently innovated in South Australia<\/a>.\u00a0 In NSW, under the blowtorch of ICAC, two former Liberal and Labor ministers, together with cleanskin former Sydney Water boss Kerry Schott, just released a blueprint for timely disclosure and ethical reforms<\/a>.<\/p>\n The swamp of money in politics can\u2019t be wished away.\u00a0\u00a0 But tainted as it is, NSW is slowly working itself cleaner.\u00a0\u00a0 Queensland must do likewise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Graeme Orr is Professor of Law at the University of Queensland and author of The Law of Politics<\/em> and Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral Systems<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Money makes the world go round.\u00a0 That\u2019s a truism in a market economy.\u00a0\u00a0 The promise of democracy \u2013 one vote, one person, one value \u2013 ought to balance that.\u00a0\u00a0 But what if money makes the political world go round? Nothing less than the fate of electoral democracy is at stake if we let money swamp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":25682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,2363,61,62,585],"tags":[769,1898,2301,171,1891,2589,627,535,2617,2598,297,326,337,2604,738],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/OpenLetterQld.jpg?fit=800%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-6Gc","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}